Jun 11, 2011

Teamwork activities

Teamwork activities are one of the best ways to ensure a team as a healthy team and it helps in fostering understanding, patience and mutual respect among the members, bonds them as a team.

Effective team working activities help team breaks down the barriers of time and distance and other obstacles. Shared-working experiences give team an instant access to any difficult problem. Teamwork is often misunderstood as the coming together of a group of people working under a particular department. But it is not like that in real situation. Teamwork is essential because it gives individual better results and these are achieved faster due to planned and effective working.

Every organization has some goals and effective teamwork activities are needed to achieve and accomplish those common goals successfully. For this reason, every team member should be able to relate well with each other and it has some great benefits that meets both the needs of organization and individual. Every talented individual will learn how to unite with the others to accomplish a common goal from these team activities, resulting in successful team building.

Teamwork is a very important factor, if you want to get a job done collectively and efficiently. It relates to the wise saying 'United we stand and divided we fall'. For a group to execute any task in an appropriate manner, it has to become a team and coordinate work among the members. If there is no unity and coordination in the members, the team will in no way achieve the desired goal. There are some times, when a single individual would need some helpers to assist him in doing a particular task. In such a case, teamwork should be given utmost importance and priority for getting the job done.

We developed the following set of questions from our experiences of past teamwork activities, consulting and team development works. This team assessment and planning framework helps newly formed teams come together and get productive quickly or it assists existing teams to refocus and renew themselves.
  • Why do we exist (our purpose)?
  • What are our goals?
  • What is expected of us?
  • Where are we going (our vision)?
  • What are our priorities?
  • What is our improvement plan?
  • What skills do we need to develop?
  • How will we work together (our values and ethics)?
  • Whom do we serve (internal or external customers or audiences or partners)?
  • What are our performance gaps (difference between the desired level of expectations and done performance)?
  • What support is available?
  • How will we track our performance?
  • How/when will we review, assess, celebrate, and refocus?
Teams develop answers and related-action plans around each question. This approach has proven to be much more effective than artificial team situations, theoretical discussions of group dynamics or outdoor adventures. Bringing a team together with a shared focus and taking necessary action to make it happen is a powerful way to mobilize, motivate and energize.

In a company people from different thoughts of school come together and if each starts pulling in a different direction the tasks and goals will remain unattained. If employees come together and work coordinately as part of a team then the company stands a better chance and this is why the importance of teamwork activities lies here. Some teamwork activities can be attempted to unite the team members together.

But making your team work all the time is not fair. After all, your team is a bunch of humans and not robot machines. So, it only makes sense that you give your team some time off and give them a much needed and well deserved break. Sometimes you may require to take some steps to improve your team and to boom your team development.

If you are giving your team the break that it deserves, you are likely to keep your team members happy. And a team leader would well understand the importance of keeping various members of different backgrounds of the team happy. After all, an organization can achieve the desired output only when its teammates are happy. Besides, a break gives various members a change to refresh and rejuvenate themselves. So, when your team gets back to work again, they are likely to offer much better results. And a break does not necessarily mean sending all the teammates for a long vacation. It is just a short span of time to let them revive after much hard work. A nice corporate lunch or dinner can serve the purpose or it may be a day off after the accomplishment of any particular project or task. And being a leader you will notice the differences of the overall output.

There are some categories of teamwork activities. These are the followings:
  • Teamwork activities for adults
  • Teamwork activities for kids
  • Teamwork activities for youths

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